malefic
by ARandomFangirler
Summary: "Sometimes I think Clary's lucky," he says into the silence. Magnus, steady and strong in a way he always is for Alec, listens. "I know her dad is evil, but at least he's certifiably evil. If there was a checklist for being a bad person, I'm pretty sure he'd have a majority of the boxes ticked. She doesn't have to think about hating him." "This is about your father," Magnus says.


" _Not you," he repeated. "Every time you talk to me I have to get drunk so I can forget how much you make me hate myself. Go away."_

 **inspired by this quote from the fic "avarice" by spun. also, i firmly subscribe to the theory of isabelle being valentine's daughter, so there's a veiled reference to that, as well as a veiled reference to suicide/self harm. this contains a mild-ish spoiler for clockwork princess, too. you can imagine this to be set at any point after city of glass, btw.**

* * *

Alec is two shots of vodka into his bottle, and contemplating his third when Isabelle raps on the door - once, twice - before jamming her key into the lock and throwing it open. It's 6pm and she's dressed for dinner in a red velvet slip dress and one of Simon's leather jackets, and Alec's halfway to tipsy brain wonders what she's doing here. He hopes she hasn't gotten into another fight with Jace. He doesn't think he can face going back to the Institute, not tonight. "Ew," she wrinkles her nose, and shuts Magnus's front door closed behind her. Isabelle jerks her chin towards the bottle in disgust, looking more like their mother than ever with the haughty tilt of her head. "I can smell that from here. Paint thinner, much?"

"It cost me five dollars," he says. "Maybe you should compliment me on my thriftiness."

His sister scoffs, and shrugs off her jacket. "No sign of Magnus, I see," she observes, flopping down onto the sofa and resting her heeled boots on top of the coffee table. Alec slowly pours himself another shot, and she whips her head round to glare at him. "Figures. I doubt he'd let you drink such cheap shit if he were here."

"He doesn't _let_ me do anything," Alec argues, even though she's right. There's a reason why everything in Magnus's drinks' cabinet costs upwards of twenty bucks a bottle; Magnus likes to lay waste to most of his money on alcohol - after dedicating an even more vast sum to his closet, of course - and Alec is banned from stocking it due to his 'terrible taste'. "Speaking of people being present, is there a reason why you're here, Iz? It's not like you to pay a strictly social call at this time of night."

"There is," she yawns, and twirls a lock of black hair around her finger. Her eyes are trained on the vodka bottle. "It can wait, though. Why are _you_ sitting here in the dark, alone, and drinking subpar alcohol when we both know damn well your boyfriend keeps an excellent stock of nearly everything needed to make a great cocktail?" Alec doesn't look at her, and Isabelle stands, a fluid movement, and stalks over to where he's sitting atop the countertop. In her boots, she's tall enough they're almost at eye level. "Drinking alone is pathetic," she whispers, maybe to herself, he's not sure. "So what gives?"

"It's Dad," he admits, and she groans. Her reaction is enough to get him to take the third shot, relishing in the way the alcohol burns and tears through the soft flesh of his throat. When Alec opens his eyes again, his sister is looking at him through her lashes with an expression he can't describe. "It's always Dad, Isabelle."

"I hate him," she declares, and takes the shot glass out of Alec's unresisting hands. Rooting through the infamous drinks cabinet, she produces a bottle of Magnus's finest tequila and, instead of pouring herself a drink, guzzles it straight. When she slams the bottle back down, it makes him jump, and she stares at the label as if her gaze alone could laser it off. "I really do."

"You don't," he says softly. "Even I don't."

"I know," Isabelle replies, and her eyes are very hard and very black in the dim light of the apartment. She looks like Valentine, he thinks absently, and then the horror of that thought makes him shudder. "It's because he makes you hate yourself. I'm not _stupid_ , Alec."

"I know you're not," he says, because he doesn't know how to come back from that. It's true, and he despises the fact that it's true. Isabelle has escaped the worst of their father - she stopped trying to impress him once she hit her teens, and tried to enrage him instead - but it comes at the cost of a fractured relationship with their mother instead, and he still doesn't know what Maryse _did_ to her, but clearly it's not too different from what Robert does fo him. The Lightwood name is a poison, he thinks. No wonder Jace didn't want it.

"What did he say?" she asks, and tugs the tail end of her braid down so her long hair hangs loose. The action makes her seem older, so that the roles are reversed and now _Alec_ feels like the younger sibling. "This time, anyway."

"Not what he _said_ ," Alec says, and his mouth feels dry, like cotton wool. "What he didn't say, really. Not one word about the Alliance. Not one word about how Magnus is. Just...he doesn't know me, and what's worse is that he doesn't _want_ to know me, Izzy. He still wants to pretend I'm a cardboard cutout of a perfect son."

Isabelle says, "And you didn't tell Magnus."

It isn't a question. "No," he agrees. "I didn't tell Magnus."

She closes her eyes briefly. Sometimes Alec forgets how alike he and his sister are, really, and he's vaguely reminded of a family portrait, pre-Max and pre-Jace. Six year old Isabelle, gap-toothed and twin-braided, and seven and a half year old Alec, gazing mournfully at the camera with big blue eyes. He'd been sad even then, but Isabelle hadn't, and he wonders if the reason why she isn't immediately admonishing him for keeping it quiet is because Isabelle herself has been keeping the reason for her own sudden sadness a secret, too.

"I hate him," she repeats, and slumps in on herself, and the roles are reversed again. Her eyes reopen, and she glances down at her hands. Long-fingered, delicate hands, just like Alec's. "Sometimes I wonder what they were like, before."

"Before?"

"Before Valentine," she clarifies. "Maybe they weren't like this before they met him. Maybe he rotted them all up from the inside, like he did to Sebastian and tried to do to Jace."

There's a silence. Isabelle sighs heavily, then says, "No. I think Dad was always a piece of shit."

The door opens again and it's Magnus, carrying a bag full of Italian takeout on one arm and a crocodile skin briefcase in the other. He visibly jumps when he sees Isabelle, and then jumps again at the sight of the two open bottles of alcohol. "I wasn't aware of the longstanding Lightwood tradition of stealing alcohol and moping," he says, faking lightness. His eyes, gold-green and wide with concern, are trained solely on him. Looking at him makes Alec's heart ache with love and something else. "Perhaps you can enlighten me?"

"I was about to go," Isabelle says brusquely, any signs of vulnerability suddenly gone, and she shivers. "Besides, Alec bought the vodka. Trust me, it was a whole five dollars."

"Glad to see I've imparted my values of paying good money for a hangover onto him, then," Magnus murmurs, and glances between them. "You don't have to leave, Isabelle. I have work I can do-"

"It's fine," she interrupts. Her voice sounds very tight. "Simon's expecting me, anyway."

When she stands up to go, she squeezes Alec's shoulder, and lets her curtain of hair obscure her expression. It's only when she's out of the door that he realises she never did tell him why she showed up in the first place. The thought makes him take another swig of vodka - Isabelle took the tequila with her, he realises belatedly - and it's Magnus who takes the bottle from him. He doesn't ask what's wrong, or anything ordinary like that. Instead, he sits with him and waits for Alec's hands to stop shaking.

He's not halfway to tipsy anymore. Alec feels downright sober, which really was not the point.

"Sometimes I think Clary got lucky," he says into the silence. Magnus, steady and strong in a way he always is for Alec, listens. "I know her dad is evil, but at least he's certifiably evil. If there was a checklist for being a bad person, I'm pretty sure he'd have a majority of the boxes ticked. She doesn't have to think about hating him."

"This is about your father," Magnus says, in that measured voice of his that he only ever uses when he's mad on Alec's behalf.

"It's about both my parents, I think," Alec decides, and thinks of six year old Isabelle. "I never knew what my mom told Izzy to make her change. She didn't used to be so cold. She always acted like she was doing it for me, but I don't think that's true."

Magnus's hand is warm in his, and Alec thinks it might be the only thing that's keeping him from falling. "Part of it is," he says. "Your sister loves you very much, Alexander. Maybe not all of it was for you, but some of it was. I've known Lightwoods, and it's not entirely out of character."

Alec swallows. "I had a terrible thought," he admits, so quietly he isn't sure if he's saying it aloud or not. "I thought that she looked like Valentine. That's horrible, isn't it?"

"I once thought that I saw Valentine in Jace," Magnus says after a moment, "and Will Herondale in you. I know he's somewhat of a touchy subject for us, but the fact that you share a passing resemblance to someone I knew a hundred years ago doesn't suddenly make you Will. Isabelle looking like Valentine for a split second doesn't make her Valentine."

"I suppose not," Alec says. He's beginning to list slightly - okay, maybe he's not that sober. "I don't hate my dad."

"I know."

"Isabelle says she does."

"Isabelle has never struck me as the type of girl to feel anything halfway," Magnus sighs, and rakes hand through his hair. The food is still in the bag, forgotten and going cold. Alec doesn't care. He doesn't think he could eat, anyway, with emotion and alcohol lancing through his veins. "The two of you manifest hurt in different ways."

Alec briefly thinks of Isabelle, pushing everyone in the world away. He thinks of himself, of holding a seraph blade to his wrists aged thirteen and wondering what would happen if he lit it up and drove it through the flesh. He even thinks of Jace, how he was always deliberately too reckless, too ostentatious and impulsive to really qualify as taking care of himself before Clary.

"It's funny," Magnus says. "The whole time, I thought it was you who resembled Will. But not really. It was always Isabelle."

"I don't want to talk about Will," Alec mumbles, and he's suddenly very tired.

"He was cursed," Magnus continues, heedless. "He thought everyone he loved would die, and so he tried his best to be unlovable."

"Was it ever broken?" Alec murmurs. He's nearly asleep. "The curse."

"There was no curse," Magnus says. "There never was. He wasted five years of his life, and when he found out the truth, he didn't know how to return to the person he was before. I don't know your sister like you do. But doesn't that sound familiar?"

It does.

"So we're cursed, then," he says with some effort. "Isabelle and I, by our parents."

"Maybe," Magnus shrugs. "Maybe not. Will's brother-in-law was a Lightwood, and his father became a worm. He chose between his family's scraps of loyalty and pride, and what was good and important, and he chose right. Isabelle might be Will, but perhaps you're Gabriel. Perhaps you get to be the one to kill the worm. Perhaps you save the day, in the end. It wouldn't be the first time."

"You've lost me," Alec sighs.

"I know," Magnus says again. "Come on. Let's go to bed."


End file.
